I tried to write the title of this Using the voice recognition on the Deoid X but it didn,’t go very well. I tries the voice recognition. Wcause because the virtual keyboard ia pretty a.nohing annoying too.

I had written that last bit once before.., half an hour ago., but then the Droid x crashed, all at once: annoying keypad interface replaced by blank glossy black slab. Totally inert. I had to yank the battery.

Then it turned out that when I got the phone., the thing I thought was a throwaway film blocking the. Artery. Battery was supposed to stay there, because without the floppy yellow throwaway tab., there’s no good way to pry out the battery. Every$ 200 machine should depend on a thick piece of scotch tape. I guess the iPhone needs duct tape to protect the
Antwnn antenna, so that’s a wash.

ProbBly there was some fine print on the pullout telling me not to remove it, but I am an Old and my eyes are bad. All I saw was “PULL.” Or it could be that the whole thimg about not removing the plastic was an Internet hoax. I am an Old.

I am an Old and the Droid X makes me uneasy. Somehow I hVe have switched it to another typing mode in which it thrums gently each time I touch thw screen. It offered me a tutorial in this input method. Learn from your Droid. Learn the new ways.

It is very easy to launch and activate things,on the Droid and not at all easy to unlaunch and deactivate. I told it to look for the Fairway while I was trying out the maps, and for the next two or three days, it kept looking for the Fairway, notifying me that it was hunting for satellite coordinates every time I tried to see my incoming e-maiL, till finAlly I needed the maps to axtually axru actually help me get somewhere, at which point I figured out how to make DROID MISSION: FAIRWAY SUPERMARKET stand down.

Now when I axcidentally hit the voice recognition virtual key, which is beside the virtual backspace key (which I am using a lot to keep this even half-readable), the whole phone grays out and frwe# freezes for a while, then tells me voice recogmition isn.’t working.

I got a Droid instead of an iPhone because I moved to New York, and the iPhone-depleted AT&T network was even worse than I’d expected. So now yesterday I got a call on Verizon that was fALLing to pieces. Too many Droid X customers, I guess. The call was some poor mope from Comcast trying to offer me great savings because his computer told him I had recently cut off my Comcast service. The computer hadn’t registered that I had cut off Comcast because I had moved away from Comcast. Even when I told the poor mope this, he kept clinging on th e terrible Verizon line trying to sell me service I couldn’t use.

Oh, right, the Droid X. I never dreamed a cell phone could do so many things. Then again, I always also sort of expected that a cell phone would fit in my pocket.

Maybe they’ll make one that does 3/4 as many things at 3/4 the size?

When I told the sales guy I carry my phone in my pocket, he sold me a protextive case that’s a rubber phone-jockstrap that does nothing to protext the vast glass screen, which seems like selling a pickup truck with lots of cargo nets but no seatbelts. And the rubber covers the glowing icons on the Droid’s buttons. Soon I will have all the buttons memorized, their funxtions programmed into my nervous system, and that won’t matter. But not now.

I would publish this straight to SlAte from my Droid, but the Droid browser won’t comply. I can go to the blog page Nd type my usernMe and password, but the “log in” button is inert. I can make it glow orange by touching it, but I can.’t make it go log me in. Some incompAtibility. The Droid X doesn’t have anything as old-fashioned as a return key or a mouse click to tell the browser to go ahead already.

So I’m writing th is in Gmail and sending it to myself, SO I can pate paste it from my laptop. Oh hey that’s how this other virtual keyboard works: finger “-dragging. Live and learn. Or else.